Energy Newsbriefs Blog

The WSU Energy Program Library prepares this current awareness blog with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy State Energy Program. These articles highlight energy-related news, articles, and reports about energy efficiency, energy conservation, and renewable sources of energy for energy professionals and interested members of the public.

"This paper presents an analysis of the transactive energy (TE) application landscape, specifically examining the transactive process, business functions, actors in different smart grid (SG) application domains, and time scales. These process steps, business functions, actors and time scales comprise the dimensions of the landscape. Six high-level, operational scenarios are presented which, together, cover the identified TE dimensions, and which can collectively be used to explore TE interactions."

"Over the past decade, wind power has become one of the fastest growing sources of electricity generation in the United States. Cumulative wind capacity grew from about 9 gigawatts (GW) in 2005 to approximately 74 GW by year-end 2015. ....This trend indicates a clear increasing role for wind; however, significant variability in historical annual wind installations has occurred with year-to-year fluctuations in wind deployment strongly correlated to changes in energy policies, particularly the wind production tax credit (PTC) policy."

"The nature of the electricity grid is changing dramatically, as are our nation’s environmental goals, so our policy thinking needs to change profoundly too. Mounting research suggests that aggressive electrification of energy end uses—such as space heating, water heating, and transportation—is needed if the United States and the world are to achieve ambitious emissions-reduction goals for carbon dioxide (CO2). This concept, the electrification of energy end uses that have been powered by fossil fuels (natural gas, propane, gasoline, diesel, or fuel oil) in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, is called “environmentally beneficial electrification."

"Yes, but we will have to double down on our efforts....We also thought it would be useful to look at potential savings in terms of cost-effective efficiency policies in order to more clearly outline what needs to be done to reach this 2050 goal. So today we release a new white paper with the results of our new analysis. These energy savings are important, because they can save the nation billions in energy bills, create domestic jobs, protect the environment, and yield numerous other benefits."

"Early distributed generation (DG) models inspired us to believe that we could all participate in the mission to democratize and decarbonize our energy infrastructure. Yet, for a long time, that was really only true for a quarter of U.S. households and businesses. For the other 75% or so, putting a solar PV system on their roof or property either wasn’t possible or wasn’t practical. Those hurdles are being addressed today through the proliferation of community solar, an adaptive DG model that has opened the door to a vast new customer base – one that includes all of us."

"Based on the results of a new regional survey, the Council reported this month that the Pacific Northwest has reduced demand for electricity by 1,739 average megawatts over the last six years — enough saved electricity to meet the annual power demand of 1.25 million homes and avoid the need to build four new average-size natural gas-fired power plants."

"This document is intended to help participants learn the history, background, and procedures for serving low-income customers. This Quick Start Guide was developed using information that has been gathered and shared in the LIEE Workgroup meetings with additional components deemed necessary to "stitch together" the information in a comprehensive manner."

"High upfront costs and a lack of easily accessible financing are commonly cited as the key barriers to investments in energy efficiency (EE). If designed and implemented optimally, EE financing can be an important tool for catalyzing EE market transformation."

"Portland General Electric has filed its 2016 Integrated Resource Plan with the Oregon Public Utility Commission, outlining a strategy that focuses on energy efficiency and customer-side demand response, in the next four years, while also leaning on natural gas to replace coal."

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The Energy Newsbriefs Blog is a continuation of the weekly Energy Newsbriefs. Please bookmark this site and return frequently. Although we will not be accepting comments from within the Blog, we would be happy to hear from you by email at library@energy.wsu.edu